WJZ cuts away from U.S. Open finals for its Ravens pre-game show

WJZ-TV, which angered many fans in May when it cut away from a dramatic 17th inning win by the Baltimore Orioles to go to "60 Minutes," found itself in the same kind of programming crunch Monday.

The CBS-owned station cut away from the men's finals of the U.S Open tennis championship at 6:30 Monday night to go to its Baltimore Ravens pre-game show.

The station started running a crawl about 6:10 p.m. telling viewers they could follow the men's finals by going online to the station's website, wjz.com.

Of course, that was little help to people who do not have online access.

"Unfortunately, the rescheduling of tennis today due to weather delays over the weekend resulted in an unavaoidable conflict with the scheduled live coverage of the Ravens-Bengals game," K,.C. Robertson, a spokesman for WJZ, told the Sun.

Robertson said the only option the station had was to carry the live feed online from cbssports.com. The station is owned by CBS.

The choice WJZ is not a hard one when you look at this way: The Ravens are the hottest ticket in town by far when it comes to ad sales. If WJZ had stayed with tennis, it would have to re-pay or make-good on all the ads sold locally for the pre-game show.